


The Detective's Companion

by Laqueus



Category: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-20
Updated: 2016-04-20
Packaged: 2018-06-03 07:46:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,299
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6602596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laqueus/pseuds/Laqueus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You can't just fly into people's bedrooms,<br/>Then expect them to calmly wave goodbye."<br/>---<br/>The young detective was never the sort of believe in ghosts - you can save that supersitious nonsense for the seances, thank you very much!</p><p>Then one had the gall to appear in her room one night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Detective's Companion

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to hell, kiddos.  
> This is a self-indulgent thing which I basically wrote for my own amusement and to let off some steam after working on a buncha projects, but here is it is anyway!  
> Also it's be great if you could listen to "Ghost" by Emilie Autumn before reading, as that was basically the main inspiration for this. Sort of regency/victiorian era Sizzlin’ but at the same time not at all and totally anachronistic? The main point is that I had a blast doing this. :D  
> (Added note: Our feline friend is human here because hA HA _HA HA HA_ )

It is a windy night when he first appears in front of her. She is dragged from sleep, half-awake and groggy, raising her heavy head ever so slightly from the pillow, awoken by a… a _feeling_ of sorts. She gazes around the room blearily. There. There in the corner. She almost doesn’t see him, mind and senses addled by sleep, but yes, there is a man in the corner. Under normal circumstances this would be adequate cause for her to leap out of bed and defend herself, after all, how _dare_ he intrude in the room of a lady?! But the past few days have been long affairs, filled with so much busy work from dawn ‘til dusk that instead of leaping out of bed and accosting him, she instead gropes for a boot (hand grapsing at empty air for a couple of seconds before finding its prize)and flings it at him, before rolling over and going back to sleep. Even so, in the moment she threw the boot, she could have sworn that he looked suprised.

—

The next few nights are spent awake, patrolling her room and long corridoors for any sign of an intruder.

But no one is there.

(She ends up falling asleep whilst sitting upright on her bed. The next morning is spent with a terrific crick in her neck.)

—

She finds him the day after that in the kitchen. She walks in and there he is, the stranger from the other night, brazenly standing there as if this were his abode.

To say it is a cacouphenous meeting would be an understatement, but by the end of it several point have been made clear.

1\. He is a spectre. At first she is not inclined to believe this ridiculous claim, but he proves himself valid by wading through her table and then making a spoon catapult itself onto the floor. You cannot argue with hard evidence like that.

2\. He knew the house many, many, many years ago, and was curious as to what state it was now in, and if anyone inhabited it.

3\. He had only been there a few days (“A few days! What sort of ghost comes in unnannounced?!” “… All of them?”) and so far had only been in an empty bedroom. He was unaware that she was inhabiting the house.

4\. He was in the middle of exploring the house when he had floated into her bedroom by accident. She had immediately woken to his presence, and in his panic instead of doing the logical thing and floating back through the wall, had hoped that by staying still he would avoid detection. He was wrong. (“You threw a _boot_ at me!”)

—

Although she had no intention of sharing her house with a ghost (or even believing in such superstitious hokum until it stood in the corner of her bedroom one night), it does not take long until he feels less like a passing visitor, and more like a friend of sorts. Her beloved dog, Missile, especially seems to have taken a shine to him. (Then again he takes a shine to everyone.)

—

They often bicker (something that the leading occultists of the day strongly advise against, but then again most of the leading occultists do not actually know any ghosts), but despite this it never causes any sort of rift in their realationship. It is like a sparring match with a friend, as opposed to a battle with an enemy.

—

There is something about the way he stands, she reckons. It is an odd, paradoxical thing. He gives the illusion of weight and fullness, and yet at the same time seems insubstantial, like a sudden stiff breeze could blow him away. He does not have any prescence in a room, the _feeling_ of another person being there, their eyes upon you - nothing.

On the contrary, she seems to fill any room she’s in with her prescence. She could enter a busy room at a ball, and even without looking up from their conversations the other patrons would somehow know that she is there. She is full of life and vim and vigour and pep.  
In a way, she has enough presence for the both of them.

—

The discovery that he is somewhat tangable to humans is a surprising and slightly unplesant discovery for the both of them.

On that fateful day, not long after he had made his presence known, and before she had fully gotten used to having a ghost in the house and couldn’t recognise his presence, he forgot to announce that he was there when entering a room. He floated over to where she was reading a report, and enquired what it was that she was reading. Instead of recieving a conclusive answer, she shrieked and reflexivly lashed out at the source of the noise. Instead of hitting flesh, she was greeted with a vague sort of resistance, her fist shallowly intersecting with his chest at most.

Naturally, they bickered about it for all of a minute (“How was I supposed to know you were there and were tangable!?” “Well I don’t exactly go around touching the living now, do I?!”), in the end apologies were made by both parties, and the information was stored away.

—

On occasions he follows her to work, tying himself to her as he ties himself to her house, and they go through the day together. Her working world is one of the law and those who break it, of the thrill of the chase, of meticiulously recording who said what at what time and what happened when in order to recreate a dangerous scene. For once she is thankful that there are so many skeptics in her profession, as nobody ever seems to remark on the man following her around. He is able to help her in small ways, keeping tabs on what a suspect is doing in the other room, listening in on conversations between witnesses, being a second mind to look at things from another angle.

Having a ghost to help can be a most useful thing.

—

She finds parties dull affairs, never feeling quite at ease during them, and eager to leave almost as soon as she steps in the room. Unfortunatley, she aways ends up being invited to one or another, and there is ususally enough riding on it from a social perspective to force her hand into attending.

One evening, facing such an affair and feeling rather like ripping her own teeth out than attending, she stumbles upon the mad idea of inviting him along. After all, not only is he a ghost that is able to travel, any event is made more bearable when one has a friend with which to pass the time (and to potentially privately mock things with), and as an added bonus there would be the entertainment of seeing people’s reactions to the pair of them turning up together! That is, if anyone is able to see him of course.

—

As it turns out, not everyone can see him.

When it comes to the 'why’ and 'how’ of it, the cosmic circumstances which dictate who can see him and who cannot, he’s remarakably blasé about it, approaching it with a loose-shouldered shrug (a gesture she’s come to know quite well). He jokes that she is determined enough to break through whatever barrier that allows to dead to remain hidden from the living, by sheer force of will.  
Needless to say, this irregularity of whether he is seen or not and his general lack of presence leads to a certain amount of confusion (and hilarity for the pair) at parties.

Yes, the young lady came with a gentleman.  
Oh ho? What gentleman would that be then, for I was watching the door as she came in and she came in alone!  
Why, it is the young gentleman over there, whom she is talking to at this very moment.  
What young gentleman? She is only with other women at the moment! Perhaps you have had more to drink than you thought, eh?

And so on.

There have been other occasions when she has been talking to him, only to have someone approach and question who she was talking to, requiring a quick deception. On the first occasion chance would have it that she happened to be standing next to a window with a remarkable view of the sea, as she chatted to him about this and that. When questioned by a passing couple as to whom she was talking to, the lie came quickly to her tongue. Why, she was so struck by the marvellous view that she was composing a bit of poetry. Ah, the pair nodded, and continued on their way.  
(“Poetry.” “What else was I supposed to say?!”)

—

Neither of them really talk about their pasts. To them, the past is a fleeting creature in the forest of life - you’ll catch a brief glimpse of it through the trees, and then it is gone - not be seen again for many months.

 

He knows she was on her own a lot as a child. That from a very young age she wanted to, no, was determined to be, a detective. There is a Something that lurks in her past, and she is determined to makes sure that the Something does not breed and foist its offspring upon another unsuspecting person.

She knows that his death was not a simple 'shot on the battlefield’ or 'died surrounded by loved ones’ affair. It was a complex thing with many different threads to it, and he himself cannot remember entirely what happened. His memory is a fickle thing, like an old worn sheet with holes and places where it is wearing thin, and intact in others. He doesn’t even know why he doesn’t remember.

—

If their life were some sort of torrid romance novel, with long passages dedicated to things like eye colour and who wore what and the obligatory set pieces such as a walk in the woods at sunset and a dramatic rescue and an emotional scene in the rain, there would no doubt be _that one chapter_. The one which would be well thumbed, a firm favourite point in the narritive which would be gushed over time and time again. The one where the heroine and hero _realise that they’re in love_. There would be a delightfully suitable amount of emotional turmoil, as the pair question everything from their life circumstances to previous interactions (preferably doing so in a dramatic location - such as the rain, or a cliff at sunset). Oh, it would be _delicious_!

Their life was not a torrid romance novel however, full of startling revelations and emotional turmoil. There was no buildup of feelings under the surface to burst out into the open. Instead it was more akin to sinking into a warm bath, or getting settled in a comfortable chair. When the realisation came, it was a remarkably causal thing for each. She was sitting at a desk at work, writing out a report and her mind happened to drift to the thought of him accompanied by a small burst of warmth.

"I’m in love with him,” she had thought, then continued writing out her report.

His revalation was much the same. He had been floating through the house, keeping an excitable Missile company, when he had spied her returning home from work through the window. The sight of her was accompanied by a such a rush on fondness that in that moment he knew that he was in love.

“Okay,” he had thought, and opened the door to welcome her home.

—

Romance novels (found only in the 'special interest’ part of of the shop) would dicate that there be a certain amount of drama involved when a ghost and human are in love. There would be the _danger_ of being found out, the _emotional turmoil_ of having falling in love with something supernatural, the endless _pining_ and _worry_. All in all, a delightful bundle of emotions for the reader to feed off of.

Once again, they would have made a very disappointing pair in a romantic novel, for neither of them really seemed to care that one was alive whilst the other was deceased. Even their confession was a casual and mundane event. They were sitting together on one of her days off, chatting about this, that, and the other, and right there in the middle of the conversation it came out, as if she were mentioning a fact about the weather. He nodded knowlingly, repsonded in kind, and that was that.

—

One night she invites him into her room. Not in a shy, blushing manner, as romance novels would have dictated (the proper way to have a strange man in your room), but casually calling through the wall, as if asking a friend if they could pass you the book you had been reading.

He points out that he doesn’t really need to sleep, and she responds by pointing out that it is the principle of the matter. He steps through the wall into her room, shrugging as he does so and that is that.

Besides, it’s only a one-off thing.

—

They end up sleeping in the same bed every night after that.

—

One night instead of asking him to turn away or leave whilst she changes, she bids him stay, and invites him to continue looking.  
He is, after all, tangable.

—

The years pass.

Little Missile’s life comes to its natural end, but as the little dog expires, he lays his hands upon the furry body, and then there are two ghosts in the house.  
They make an unusual family of sorts, the Detective and her beloved ghosts.

And they are happy.


End file.
